The rock band Foreigner has had a few new members in its lineup since starting in 1976.

But on Wednesday at Sands Casino Bethlehem, it will have 22 new voices – members of Liberty High School choir.

The choir has been invited onstage to back Foreigner during its hit “I Want to Know What Love Is,” which will close the show.

Foreigner also will donate $1,000 to the choir for its music program through sales of the band’s latest CD, “Can’t Slow Down,” a three-disc set that will be sold before the 7:30 p.m. Musik at the Sands concert at the casino. Each CD purchase also will include a chance to win an autographed Foreigner guitar; the winner will be announced at the end of the show.

Foreigner uses high school choruses in many of its tour stops, and Liberty Choral Director Gayle Justice says the band’s marketing director, John Lappen, called her last week to invite Liberty’s choir to join them. But Justice said she was teaching a class at the time, and the call went to voice mail.

When she heard the message, Justice says, “right away you think, ‘Am I being punked?’ ” While talking to Lappen, Justice says she searched the Internet to determine Lappen was legitimate.

To help persuade her and give an example of the performance, Lappen referred Justice to online videos of other shows, such as this one with the high school chorus from Rhinebeck, N.Y.

Here's that video; the students join in at the 2:30 mark:

"As far as I'm concerned, music is not only the most powerful form of communication between the peoples of the world, but it also opens up a fantastic new dimension of feeling and creativity,” Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones says in a statement. “The goal of this partnership is to provide our youth with tools to express themselves through music."

Foreigner gave Liberty a CD of the song and sheet music for the parts of the song the students will sing, and Liberty Assistant Choral Director Krista Snyder said the choir practiced twice last week and will practice three more times this week before taking the stage.

The choir has 143 members, but there’s only room enough on stage for 22. So Snyder and Justice say they chose older students who had been with the choir longer. Justice says she was concerned about the age requirement for the casino, anyway. In fact, students normally man the CD sales, but parent chaperones will be used instead because minors can’t make sales in a Pennsylvania casino.

“I Want to Know What Love Is” hit No. 1 when it was released, was Foreigner’s biggest hit and has been so successful it re-entered the charts in 2000, 2001 and 2002. In 1988, Rolling Stone magazine designated it the No. 54 Best Single of the past 25 years.

But because it was released in 1984 – before even Snyder, the assistant director, was born – few students knew the song or even Foreigner, whose last Billboard Top 40 was in 1988.

“We showed the kids the YouTube video and explained who they are,” Snyder said with a laugh. “And then they were so excited.”

“The adults are more excited than the kids,” Justice says. “But when you’ve got music that is timeless, you don’t have to improve on it.”

Additional proceeds from the CD sales will support B-Smart, the after-school enrichment program for Bethlehem Area School District at-risk students run by ArtsQuest, which presents Musikfest and has partnered with The Sands for the Musik at the Sands series.

The comments to this entry have been closed.

JOHN J. MOSER has been around long enough to have seen the original Ramones in a small club in New Jersey, U2 from the fourth row of a theater and Bob Dylan's born-again tours. But he also has the number for All-American Rejects' Nick Wheeler on his cell phone, wrote the first story ever done on Jack's Mannequin and hung out in Wiz Khalifa's hotel room.

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS

JODI DUCKETT: As The Morning Call's assistant features editor responsible for entertainment, she spends a lot of time surveying the music landscape and sizing up the Valley's festivals and club scene. She's no expert, but enjoys it all — especially artists who resonated in her younger years, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Tracy Chapman, Santana and Joni Mitchell.

KATHY LAUER-WILLIAMS enjoys all types of music, from roots rock and folk to classical and opera. Music has been a constant backdrop to her life since she first sat on the steps listening to her mother’s Broadway LPs when she was 2. Since becoming a mother herself, she has become well-versed on the growing genre of kindie rock and, with her son in tow, can boast she has seen a majority of the current kid’s performers from Dan Zanes to They Might Be Giants.

STEPHANIE SIGAFOOS: A Jersey native raised in Northeast PA, she was reared in a house littered with 8-tracks, 45s and cassette tapes of The Beatles, Elvis, Meatloaf and Billy Joel. She also grew up on the sounds of Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw and can be found traversing the countryside in search of the sounds of a steel guitar. A fan of today's 'new country,' she digs mainstream/country-pop crossovers like Lady Antebellum and Sugarland and other artists that illustrate the genre's diversity.